The geographer Anaximander is credited with first making a likeness of the, earth in the shape of a globe; the fourth-century philosopher and scientist Aristotle provided two theories on the shape of the earth: sphierical, or flat and shaped like a drum. In the early fourth century the philosopher, Plato gave wider currency to the idea of the earth as a globe hanging unsupported in the middle of the universe:

I believe it is very large indeed, and we live in a little bit of it between the Pillars of Hercules and the river Phasis, like ants or frogs in a marsh, lodging round the sea, and that many other people live in many other such regions. . . . first of all the earth looks from above like those leather balls with twelve patches, many-colored, of which the colors here...